Fugitive Romanian prince facing extradition after arrest at Maltese holiday resort

Romanian prince, Paul-Philippe Hohenzollern, has been arrested in Malta and faces extradition to Romania

A fugitive Romanian prince has been arrested in Malta, four years after fleeing a court case in his home country.

Prince Paul-Philippe of Romania, 75, who is not officially considered part of the Romanian royal household, was apprehended by police on Sunday while on holiday in a resort on Malta and is now facing extradition to Bucharest.

The prince, who is also known Paul-Philippe Hohenzollern, was convicted in 2020 of corrupt activities related to £120 million in real estate near the Romanian capital, to which he falsely claimed ownership.

Paul Philippe Hohenzollern, pictured here in 2011, during a court case in Romania. Picture: AFP via Getty Images

He was sentenced to three years and four months in jail for his role in illegally selling on properties confiscated from the royals during Romania's communist era.

The prince is among 18 people convicted over the schemes relating to a 28.6-hectare royal farm area and the 47-hectare Snagov Forest, in what became known as the “Băneasa Farm case”. He was accused of illegally reclaiming and then selling the lands to a company controlled by a diamond tycoon in 2006, which prosecutors said he had no right to do.

An extradition warrant was issued for him in 2020, after he fled the country during his trial in the Romanian city of Brasov. He was arrested in France in 2022, but appealed for his extradition to be denied.

At the time, he told the Court of Appeal in Paris that one of the judges who convicted him in Romania had not actually taken an oath of office.

Prince Paul-Philippe said: “I have done nothing illegal or wrong. I trust France to get me out of this nightmare.”

His plea was successful, after the court claimed the extradition was “politically motivated” and refused to uphold it. However, he was arrested in Malta this week.

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The prince is the grandson of King Carol II of Romania, who ruled between 1930 and 1940 and is the son of King Carol’s firstborn, Carol Lambrino, and his first wife, Helene Henriette Naravitzine. However, King Carol’s marriage to Mr Lambrino’s mother, Zizi, was annulled a year after the wedding. As a result, King Carol’s second son, Mihai, took on succession rights and ruled as king for two periods, the second until 1947. During Communism, he took refuge in the UK, where he worked as a gardener in Hertfordshire, England, before moving to Switzerland.

Romania, which was under Communist rule until 1989, is now a republic.

Prince Paul-Philippe, who has British, French and Romanian citizenship, married an American, Lia Georgia Triff, in 1996 and has one child – who was was baptised in 2010, with Romanian President Traian Băsescu taking on the role of godfather. He returned to live in the country in the 1990s until his court case.

The prince claims to be the rightful head of Romania's royal house on the grounds that Prince Carol's marriage to Ms Lambrino, carried out in a religious ceremony in Odessa, was never annulled in an Orthodox Church, thus rendering his subsequent marriages bigamous.